the most final
concluding work

The dance-floor in the Central Park of Recreation was all that still remained there for me. And I visited it not as a belated shooter in search for lame game but simply to get blues. A session of nostalgia priced 50 kopecks.

I was one of the first to enter the round enclosure of the dance-floor and get seated onto the timber bench of beams running along the tall pipe-grates in the peeling-off coat of silver-gray. The large black boxes of the loudspeakers on the stage thundered with trendy records because "live" music became bygones. Between the numbers some, like, DJ switched the mike on and announced what had just been played and what was coming next. At times, he attempted at making a clumsy cockamamie joke, fortunately, not too often.

I sat quietly, the back of my head leaned against the iron pipe in the fencing. The twilight closed in but high in the sky the flocks of swifts still revolved beneath the clouds touched by the parting sun rays. I recollected their carousel on that day when you turned one month old, and we brought you for a checkup in the children's polyclinic, in the hand-me-down carriage under the tulle cover to throw off the evil eye. Only those swifts kept chirping shrilly when circling above the roof of the department store, while these near the fading clouds were not heard because of being so far and high.

Then the sky became dark, the night fell, and I still sat on the bench and never danced because I knew my place which was among the other thirty-and-over-year-olds outside, under the lamp in the nearby alley. You might stop there for a couple of minutes to watch the jumping joy of the next generation before going back to your settled life with a davenport opposite the TV…

I sat quietly as becomes a foreign particle, listened to the music and watched, point-blank, the young stock mass getting gradually denser in front of the bench… that girl's neck is longer than that of Nefertiti… very nice, like a lithe stem of dandelion… And I admired it without getting aroused. Then she did not show up for a couple of weekends before coming back with her neck drooped guiltily and obviously shortened, and I knew that she got cut off at the entrance examinations to an institute…

At eleven, in the general throng, I left the park for the streetcar stop by Peace Square. Those who lived closer diverged from the common flow in pairs and groups. People from far-off neighborhoods discussed: to wait or not to wait? Streetcars at that time of day were an avis rara…

Once the stop was occupied by a glass-eyed mujik of about 40. He eyed the approaching youngsters with a scornful stare, akimbo, his palms on his buttocks, in the attitude of a Nazi officer by the death camp gate bearing the inscription "Forget all hope you who come in here". The scared pairs and small companies got silent and bypassed him to timidly cram in the remaining half of the long stop. Triumphantly stood he, feet planted wide apart into the conquered living space alongside the track rails…

I stopped in front of the victor, barely two meters away.

…so, Sturmbahnfuhrer, dueling of attitudes, eh?.

Mine came all of itself, from the newsreels of the Victory Parade in Moscow, 1945. Besides the dumping fascist banners to the Lenin Mausoleum, there were also footage stretches filming civilians, girls for the most part with their faces so sad. Almost all of those girls from the past assumed the same posture – their left arms hanging alongside the body, the right raised across the stomach to grip the left elbow.

Facing the glass-eyed, I replicated their stance. Only my right hand was clutching higher than by those sad girls, around my left biceps and because of that my hanging down left arm became a kinda trunk already, sort of a dangling proboscis at rest. The opponent was not fit to withstand even 1 minute. He dropped his head in desperation, clasped his hands behind over his butt in the traditional zek attitude, and began to pace in shortened steps across the asphalted width of the stop, as far as the walls of invisible cell let him go.

The young folks were amazed at the ease of my victory over the cockroach, and they began to fill the whole stop, taking note for the future, that know-how is power… Yet, to be honest, my deed was pure improvisation, a flukey present from my generation to theirs…

~ ~ ~

Over and over again, clattering wheels beneath the floor rock the car in shallow sways, the local train carries me away from Konotop… But where, by the way, am I going? By all that black-ink darkness outside the window, it’s a late local train, so my trip is no farther than to Nezhyn, which means I’m paying another visit to Zhomnir…

My fuzzy reflection in the doubly-glazed window nods dimly in time with the rhythm of tapping against the rail joints: yea-to-him-and-no-where-else… Why do I go there? Well, probably, there is some reason… Say, typing with his typewriter another story, or maybe a couple of verses…

But all that's nothing but a downright smoke screen, and there's no use to tell lies to oneself. In fact, I am going to feel, again and again, the aching longing for the lost irreversibly. I am going to torture myself on the bank of invisible river, that same river in which, eternity before, there splashed a ripple where I loved and was loved in response… That's why the train rumbles along, thru the night, and in one of its cars I'm sitting on the edge of a three-person seat, while my briefcase basks impudently, smack in the middle of it.

It's a rare occasion when the car is empty; well, almost so. About 20 meters from my place, in a seat on the same side from the aisle, a girl is sitting. Because of riding backward, she’s facing me with her head leaned against the black window glass. At such a distance I cannot make out the features of her face, it's just a girl, alone in an empty car of a night train, with a bob cut of blond hair. She does not care about my presence, but looks quietly thru the window, where the picture of nocturnal darkness is sweeping by behind the dim reflection of the lamps in the ceiling of the empty car. Of course, it is empty. I am of no account, I sit quietly in the distance and do not stare at her at all. My absent gaze is directed along the aisle into the empty car vestibule behind the glass of the sliding door, trembling and quaking in time with the thuds of train wheels. Though such an attitude doesn't, of course, prevent a sentimental corner of my eye from catching the outline of her blond head and the upper part of her shoulders visible above the series of the seat-backs separating us. Just two in an empty car rushing thru the night…

But—lo!—she wakes up from her sad stupor. The right hand touches her blond haircut. She turns a bit deeper to the window, demonstrating her profile, and then looks straight ahead with her face turned to me.

From my place, I can't see where exactly her eyes are directed, yet I don't need any longer to show interest in the empty vestibule. Now I look at her and admire, with platonic frankness, the face turned to my side and her shoulders beneath the cloth of her cloak. That's all I can do; I will not let her down with too daring jokes or suggestions, like, "You're cute, I'm cool, be my third wife…" But—ah!—she's so nice, I swear! Even at this distanced semi-discernibility…

The clattering of wheels fades into the muffled background substituted with the beautiful melody by Tariverdiev from the soundtrack to the series of 17 Moments of Springtime. It's when the secret agent Isayev, aka Stirlitz, has a meeting with his wife, arranged by the Center at a small café in Germany.

She gets seated three tables away from him so that he might admire her after a decade of separation. How's she getting on in the already unknown to him USSR? For ten dangerous years, he’s been away from his country, away from her…

But sweeping away all the thoughts unnecessary for the moment, he only looks observing stealthily the new features in the half-unfamiliar woman. More! Please, more!.

But no, the time is up. Another Soviet secret agent, her escort sitting by her side, looks at his watch. The undercover meeting's over. And he takes her away so that the bloodhounds of the Gestapo wouldn't run them down…

Yet here, in the local train car, Tariverdiev's melody does not abate, we are out of their control, alone in the whole secluded…

BRENNGG! ZPRTYCH !!

From among the leatherette backrests between us, like from a slightly sloped deck of cards, a red joker jumps out. We were not alone!. That drunk has been sleeping between us all along!

Swollen with the hangover, his red mug semaphores: "The remote flirtation is over!"

Oh, gods! I did roll in the aisles in a fit of horse-laughter! With all the stops pulled out.

Thru his cloudy ignorance, watched the drunk my convulsions, then he looked back at the girl, slap-wiped his mouth with his paw and stiffly shoved off to the vestibule, and then to the next car. His delicate nature revolted against traveling in the same car with screaming quadrupeds.

And you are so right, alky! To each his own. It’s time to knock off the mopish shit…

~ ~ ~